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Governments actually make the risky investments. From infrastructure to nukes to the internet to space travel to particle colliders to fusion. The governments t

Governments actually make the risky investments. From infrastructure to nukes to the internet to space travel to particle colliders to fusion. The governments that have made these investments are the ones that do the best job of representing the interests of millions of people. If you take the limit of concentrating wealth, you get a dictatorship. They don't seem to do much. It's hard to believe in democracy and insane wealth concentration at the same time.

WalterBright 5y ago
> If you take the limit of concentrating wealth, you get a dictatorship. Except that's never happened, not even close. Ironically, the modern activists are busy trying to force businesses into getting involved in politics unrelated to their business. This smacks of foolishness to me, as in be careful what one wishes for. > It's hard to believe in democracy and insane wealth concentration at the same time. Wealth in a capitalist country is created, not concentrated.
- dumbfoundded 5y ago
  Consolidation of money and power into the hands of a few people is most of the most prevailing trends in history. What do you think a king is? Or a conquerer? Or a Caesar? It strikes me as quite ignorant to posit that wealth and power has never been concentrated into any sort of autocracy. If anything, we live in a unique time and place where military power and financial power are so separated. It is our democratic institutions that enable us to have billionaires without autocracy. Erosion and stagnation of these institutions is the problem. You also seem to completely abandon your previous statement: "Countries without billionaires are mired in poverty. Billionaires can make high risk investments. A million people won't." Additionally, you've responded to arguments I haven't even made about forcing businesses to be involved in politics. Your ideas seem like a loose collection of conservative talking points and fail to make any sort of coherent argument.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > Or a Caesar? Caesar gained power through running a business providing people with wine? > You also seem to completely abandon your previous statement Not at all. It is obvious that people who became wealthy through force of arms or using taxation to line their pockets are in a different category.
    - dumbfoundded 5y ago
      I'm not sure you really have a grasp of human history if you think money and force are separate things. That's only a very recent idea. If you look at historical rankings of wealth, by far the richest people were leaders of great empires. They were so wealthy that it's silly to put it in modern terms (1) & (2). Caesar Augustus controlled the entire output of Egypt which was the breadbasket of the Mediterranean world. His person wealth is estimated to be in the $5 to $10 trillion range. More recently, how rich was Stalin when he could literally do anything with an economy making up 10% of global GDP? It's even unclear how much Putin is worth with credible accusations that he recently built a $1B palace (3) and has a wealth in the $200B range. It is only our recently invented democratic institutions that enable billionaires who profit from non-violent sources. I sincerely hope you develop a sense of how important these institutions are. This is my last comment btw, I hope you feel like you've learned something. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_... (2) https://www.luxuo.com/the-lux-list/super-rich/richest-people-of-all-time.html https://www.luxuo.com/the-lux-list/super-rich/richest-people... (3) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56007943 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56007943
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        > how rich was Stalin Stalin didn't buy his way into power. He took power by force, then used that power to make himself rich. This is not capitalism. As I pointed out, people who take money through force are in a quite different category. > I hope you feel like you've learned something. I'm dumbfounded that you believe that Stalin, Caesar, etc., were free market capitalists gaining their wealth through running a successful business. > It is only our recently invented democratic institutions that enable billionaires who profit from non-violent sources. None have yet turned that into running the country. Note how billionaire Bloomberg's presidential campaign failed miserably. As did Ross Perot's. Rich people in America have not had much of a track record of buying themselves into office, though elected representatives have a tendency to get very rich while in office. Hmmm...
robryan 5y ago
I think it makes sense in a limited way. Government can do a lot but struggles to make big bets and see them through in the way a single minded billionaire could. Maybe government could solve this is providing some bigger chunks of no strings attached funding under the direction of a single person. NASA has been beholden to the latest administration’s whims and inconsistent budget allocation for decades.
- dumbfoundded 5y ago
  No billionaire's focus can even come close to matching a nation at war. In less than 25 years, governments went from realizing nukes were possible to creating an arsenal large enough to destroy civilization (1). I think the great challenge of our generation will be a way to come together with such single minded focus to tackle problems without trying to exterminate each other. (1) https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/atomic-bomb-history https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/atomic-bomb-hist...
WalterBright 5y ago
> Governments actually make the risky investments. Large investments are not the same as risky investments.
- dumbfoundded 5y ago
  Democratic governments make the largest and riskiest investments. I've provided quite a few examples in the last century. Do you have any evidence or theory as to the contrary?
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    What's risky about building a highway?
  - gameman144 5y ago
    Democratic government could very well make the largest and riskiest investments, but I find it hard to believe that they make the most efficient investments. Government need to get a job done, but they also need to appease voters and play politics to be able to achieve long-term goals. Businesses self-select for efficiency in the long-term, because those that aren't efficient go bankrupt or get overtaken by a more efficient upstart.
    - ModernMech 5y ago
      When making long-term investments, it's often a bad idea to optimize for efficiency (if we want to measure efficiency as return on investment), because it's difficult to predict ahead of time which projects will work out the best in 10 or 30 years. Sometimes the best bets are the ones no one thinks will work out, and therefore no one wants to make. I think PG has spilled a lot of ink about this in the context of VC investment, but the same idea doubly applies to government funding because their time horizons are even longer term. If all you do is optimize for next quarter, next year, or even the next 5 years, you're going to miss the things that at first seem innocuous or useless, but then in 30 years blow up into something huge.
    - dumbfoundded 5y ago

WalterBright 5y ago

> If you take the limit of concentrating wealth, you get a dictatorship. Except that's never happened, not even close. Ironically, the modern activists are busy trying to force businesses into getting involved in politics unrelated to their business. This smacks of foolishness to me, as in be careful what one wishes for. > It's hard to believe in democracy and insane wealth concentration at the same time. Wealth in a capitalist country is created, not concentrated.

dumbfoundded 5y ago
Consolidation of money and power into the hands of a few people is most of the most prevailing trends in history. What do you think a king is? Or a conquerer? Or a Caesar? It strikes me as quite ignorant to posit that wealth and power has never been concentrated into any sort of autocracy. If anything, we live in a unique time and place where military power and financial power are so separated. It is our democratic institutions that enable us to have billionaires without autocracy. Erosion and stagnation of these institutions is the problem. You also seem to completely abandon your previous statement: "Countries without billionaires are mired in poverty. Billionaires can make high risk investments. A million people won't." Additionally, you've responded to arguments I haven't even made about forcing businesses to be involved in politics. Your ideas seem like a loose collection of conservative talking points and fail to make any sort of coherent argument.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > Or a Caesar? Caesar gained power through running a business providing people with wine? > You also seem to completely abandon your previous statement Not at all. It is obvious that people who became wealthy through force of arms or using taxation to line their pockets are in a different category.
  - dumbfoundded 5y ago
    I'm not sure you really have a grasp of human history if you think money and force are separate things. That's only a very recent idea. If you look at historical rankings of wealth, by far the richest people were leaders of great empires. They were so wealthy that it's silly to put it in modern terms (1) & (2). Caesar Augustus controlled the entire output of Egypt which was the breadbasket of the Mediterranean world. His person wealth is estimated to be in the $5 to $10 trillion range. More recently, how rich was Stalin when he could literally do anything with an economy making up 10% of global GDP? It's even unclear how much Putin is worth with credible accusations that he recently built a $1B palace (3) and has a wealth in the $200B range. It is only our recently invented democratic institutions that enable billionaires who profit from non-violent sources. I sincerely hope you develop a sense of how important these institutions are. This is my last comment btw, I hope you feel like you've learned something. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_... (2) https://www.luxuo.com/the-lux-list/super-rich/richest-people-of-all-time.html https://www.luxuo.com/the-lux-list/super-rich/richest-people... (3) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56007943 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56007943
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      > how rich was Stalin Stalin didn't buy his way into power. He took power by force, then used that power to make himself rich. This is not capitalism. As I pointed out, people who take money through force are in a quite different category. > I hope you feel like you've learned something. I'm dumbfounded that you believe that Stalin, Caesar, etc., were free market capitalists gaining their wealth through running a successful business. > It is only our recently invented democratic institutions that enable billionaires who profit from non-violent sources. None have yet turned that into running the country. Note how billionaire Bloomberg's presidential campaign failed miserably. As did Ross Perot's. Rich people in America have not had much of a track record of buying themselves into office, though elected representatives have a tendency to get very rich while in office. Hmmm...

robryan 5y ago

I think it makes sense in a limited way. Government can do a lot but struggles to make big bets and see them through in the way a single minded billionaire could. Maybe government could solve this is providing some bigger chunks of no strings attached funding under the direction of a single person. NASA has been beholden to the latest administration’s whims and inconsistent budget allocation for decades.

dumbfoundded 5y ago
No billionaire's focus can even come close to matching a nation at war. In less than 25 years, governments went from realizing nukes were possible to creating an arsenal large enough to destroy civilization (1). I think the great challenge of our generation will be a way to come together with such single minded focus to tackle problems without trying to exterminate each other. (1) https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/atomic-bomb-history https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/atomic-bomb-hist...

WalterBright 5y ago

> Governments actually make the risky investments. Large investments are not the same as risky investments.

dumbfoundded 5y ago
Democratic governments make the largest and riskiest investments. I've provided quite a few examples in the last century. Do you have any evidence or theory as to the contrary?
- WalterBright 5y ago
  What's risky about building a highway?
- gameman144 5y ago
  Democratic government could very well make the largest and riskiest investments, but I find it hard to believe that they make the most efficient investments. Government need to get a job done, but they also need to appease voters and play politics to be able to achieve long-term goals. Businesses self-select for efficiency in the long-term, because those that aren't efficient go bankrupt or get overtaken by a more efficient upstart.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    When making long-term investments, it's often a bad idea to optimize for efficiency (if we want to measure efficiency as return on investment), because it's difficult to predict ahead of time which projects will work out the best in 10 or 30 years. Sometimes the best bets are the ones no one thinks will work out, and therefore no one wants to make. I think PG has spilled a lot of ink about this in the context of VC investment, but the same idea doubly applies to government funding because their time horizons are even longer term. If all you do is optimize for next quarter, next year, or even the next 5 years, you're going to miss the things that at first seem innocuous or useless, but then in 30 years blow up into something huge.
  - dumbfoundded 5y ago